Storm Front

CHAPTER 27

SLOATSBURG, New York

Whitely Cracker had never really been cut in his entire life. Shaving nicks, yes. Paper cuts, sure. And he had once gouged himself with a cheese knife while cutting some particularly stubborn Manchego.

But a full-on laceration? One that was deep and painful and real? One that required stitches? It had never happened.

Now he had a face full of them. The bullet from Volkov’s gun had shattered the window they were sitting in front of. Then the force of the propane truck explosion had sent them hurtling into him at high velocity, like hundreds of tiny knives. He counted himself blessed that none had hit his eyes.

The only reason he had not immediately gone to the hospital to seek treatment was that he was running for his life.

The moment he was sure it was safe to come out from the table he had been hiding under, he had scrambled to the garage where he kept his car. The valet had stared at him hard, even asking him in Spanish whether he needed el doctor. But Whitely had scrambled into his Jaguar as if nothing were unusual, tipping the man double as if to say, Don’t ask any more questions, okay? He was just another hedge fund manager with a face full of blood.

Once he got into his car, he drove without thinking. He didn’t know where he was driving or why, just that the more miles he put between himself and that nutcase Gregor Volkov the better.

He couldn’t go to his office for obvious reasons: Volkov would be looking there. Home was… Oh, Jesus, home. He pulled out his phone, called his wife, told her not to panic, then basically instructed her to get herself and the kids as far away from Chappaqua as possible.

Then he drove. He went north, merging on the Deegan Expressway and following it until it became the New York State Thruway and took him into the rolling countryside that Manhattanites merged into one monolithic landscape that they referred to as “upstate.”

He made sure — very sure — he wasn’t being followed, invoking all the countermeasures he had seen in every spy flick he had ever watched: speeding up, then slowing down; pulling to the side of the road just after blind curves; taking exits, passing through gas stations, then immediately getting back on the Interstate.

When he was sure he was alone, he pulled in at a travel plaza off the New York State Thruway. Now he was sitting in front of a Dunkin’ Donuts, sipping coffee, being nervously eyed by an Indian woman in a sari who was trying to stop her two children from staring at him. He needed a plan. And he needed help. He knew that.

But what plan would work? He had no experience at being on the run. Nor did he have any background in having his life threatened.

And who would help him? Barry, his chief of security at Prime Resource Investment Group, was a retired cop but, obviously, something of a moron. The man had allowed Whitely’s house, car, and office — and who knows what else — to have the bejesus bugged out of them and had been completely unaware the whole time.

He thought about calling Teddy Sniff, his trusted accountant. But what would Teddy do? Order an audit on Volkov? Make him reconcile his accounts? Teddy would be every bit as unfamiliar with this new terrain as Whitely.

The coffee had run out. He went to get a refill, wondering as he used his black American Express card whether Volkov would somehow have a way of tracing it, and whether therefore this would be the most deadly cup of coffee he ever drank. He was in the midst of pouring his second pack of sugar into the brew when suddenly the idea hit him:

That guy from the CIA. What was his name? Cloud? No, that wasn’t right. Rain? No, that was the dumbest name for an action hero Whitely had ever heard of.

Storm. That was it. Derrick Storm. The CIA had to help him, right? He was a taxpayer. And even if he was a taxpayer who paid an effective rate below 15 percent, he was still an American citizen. Storm would be obligated, wouldn’t he?

Whitely pulled out his phone, found the name on his contact list, and was about to hit send when he remembered what Storm had instructed him: No calls from his cell phone. Someone would be listening.

Storm said he should find “a pay phone in the middle of nowhere.” Upstate New York surely qualified as nowhere. So Whitely started wandering around the rest area, looking for a pay phone, praying they even still existed. Who used pay phones anymore? Whitely hadn’t touched one in well over a decade. When he found a small bank of them, he realized he no longer had any idea how to make one work. He no longer had a calling card — that was so quaint, so nineties. He actually needed… change? That was also antiquated. Whitely had gone cashless years earlier.

It took finding an ATM machine, pulling out cash, buying a donut, and asking for change in quarters before he had some.

Finally, he was ready. He dropped in four quarters and dialed.

“Storm Investigations,” he heard.

“Mr. Storm, thank God. This is Whitely Cracker.”

There was a pause, followed by a terse “Yes. And?”

“You said if I became fearful for my life I should call you. Well, I’m fearful for my life.”

Another pause. “And why is that?”

“I know this is going to sound crazy. But there’s a… Jeez, I don’t even know what to call him. I guess you would call him a… a hired thug. He’s Russian, and…”

“Gregor Volkov,” Storm said, just to speed the conversation along.

“You know about him?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then you probably know I…”

He faltered.

“I…” He tried again.

“I’ve made a… Oh, God, what have I done?”

The weight of it finally hit him. The damage he had caused. The lives that had been shattered. The lives that were now in jeopardy. It had started as a kind of play on his part — just one big investment gambit, nothing more — and it had gone so incredibly wrong.

It was all crashing down on him, all at once. And that was when Graham Whitely Cracker V — mover of billions, master of the universe, scion of the Cracker fortune — started crying.

It was not a small cry. His face had crumpled. His shoulders heaved. He was making this noise that sounded more animal than human, and he knew he must have looked both terrifying and stupid, but he couldn’t stop himself. He just leaked tears and snot all over that pay-phone handset and blubbered nonsensical snippets of sentences.

Storm let him carry on. He didn’t feel the least shred of pity for Cracker. Storm was more ready to kill Cracker than he was to comfort him. It was all he could do not to hang up the phone at this feeble exhibition, which was as much self-pity as anything.

When he could listen to it no more, Storm finally said, “Mr. Cracker, get ahold of yourself.”

Cracker bawled some more, apologizing all the while, but finally started saying things Storm could actually parse.

“Volkov… Volkov turned on me…. He’s told me he’s going to kill my family if I don’t cooperate…. Oh, God…”

“Cooperate with what, Mr. Cracker?”

“The MonEx codes. I… I… I paid him to steal MonEx codes from a bunch of bankers around the world. And I might have… I told him about Click Theory. I can’t believe I was so stupid, but he was… I mean, he was just this muscle-for-hire, you know? I never thought he would have any plans of his own beyond… He was just supposed to give the codes to me, accept his payment, and that was that. But now he wants to use them for his own purpose. He doesn’t know how to work the MonEx, and even if he found someone who did, he wouldn’t know how exactly to perform the trades you would need to make Click Theory happen. There’s probably only a handful of us in the world who truly understand what would need to be done. And with the threats against my family… I have no choice.”

“What exactly does he hope to gain from this?”

“A planned catastrophe, just like me, but with a different ending,” Whitely said. “He was rambling on about returning Russia to her full glory. ‘America will sink. Russia will rise.’ All that stuff. He’s aligned some Russian oligarchs to take advantage of the instability brought on by a triggering of Click Theory. In return, those oligarchs are apparently going to support him in some kind of coup….”

“Making a financially reinvigorated Russia a military dictatorship with General Volkov at the head of it,” Storm completed.

“Yeah, that’s about the size of it.”

Storm considered the ramifications of having a man with Volkov’s ruthlessness and ambition with his finger on the trigger of Russia’s depleted-but-still-formidable nuclear arsenal. It was not a thought he wanted to entertain further.

“Mr. Cracker, where are you right now?”

“I’m… at a rest stop off the New York State Thruway…. Just past Exit Fifteen-A.”

“First thing I want you to do is call your wife and tell her…”

“It’s already taken care of,” Cracker assured him. “She’ll be out of the house in no time.”

“Okay, then the next thing you need to do is sit tight and wait for me. I’ll be there in under an hour.”

Storm knew that as long as Volkov needed him, Whitely Cracker still had his uses.

As bait.

NEW YORK, New York

First problem to deal with: Storm needed a change of clothes. Fortunately, the city of New York was full of establishments that sold those. Storm was soon reoutfitted, in a charcoal corduroy jacket, a snug-fitting black T-shirt, gray cargo pants, and — his father would have been proud — black rubber-soled shoes.

Second problem to deal with: Storm needed a car. Fortunately, the city of New York was full of people who didn’t own one of those and therefore needed to rent one. He let his phone lead him to the nearest rental place, and he was soon driving the only Ford they had. A Fusion. Not the sexiest car for an international superspy, but at least it had a V6 engine.

The third problem to deal with was the most vexing of all: Storm needed the nerds. And, unfortunately, those nerds were not in the city of New York. They were in a cubby deep underneath and/or beside and/or on top of CIA headquarters. And given that he had just been terminated, Storm couldn’t just call them.

Unless…

Unless he could get a certain someone to answer his cell phone.

One ring. Two rings.

“What do you want?” Agent Kevin Bryan demanded in a fierce whisper.

“Kev. Kev, bro, it’s me, Storm.”

“Yeah, I know,” Bryan whispered. “But I’m sorry, we can’t have a conversation right now. I don’t talk to dead people.”

“I know, I know. But I need a favor.”

“Forget it. The way Jones is stomping around here? He’ll bust me back to the translating unit if he learns I helped you. You’re too hot to touch right now.”

“You don’t have a choice. You owe me.”

“From what? I do n — Oh, wait, because of that twenty bucks you gave Javi? Forget it.”

“A debt is a debt,” Storm said.

“That debt is not equal to anything you’d ask me to do right now.”

“Fine,” Storm said. “I’m calling in Bahrain.”

Bryan paused. Even in the slippery world of the CIA, there was a code of honor between fellow foot soldiers that would not allow Bryan to back out now, and they both knew it.

“Aww, man, you’re unbelievable,” Bryan said. “Fine. What do you need?”

“First of all, you can’t tell Jones about any of this.”

“Believe me, that’s no problem. Jones would fire me on the spot if he knew I was even talking to you.”

“Good. I actually need something from the nerds. There was an unauthorized helicopter that flew into Manhattan airspace earlier this morning….”

“Yeah, I sort of heard about that,” Bryan interrupted. “You are of course aware of what direction shit flows, and I can assure you I’ve been one of the unfortunate victims downstream of a flood of it.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. Anyhow, have the nerds hack into the FAA’s computers. The FAA has a flight history database that tracks all authorized and unauthorized air travel. I need to know where that helicopter went.”

“Hang on,” Bryan said, putting his phone down. Storm could hear Jones, still fulminating somewhere in the background.

A few minutes later, Bryan returned: “Okay, I got it. The helicopter took off from and landed at what appears to be the rooftop of an abandoned factory in Bayonne. I’ll send GPS coordinates to your phone.”

Storm chuckled grimly.

“What?” Bryan asked.

“First Paris, now Bayonne.”

“Why is that funny?”

“I’ve just always thought of Bayonne as the Paris of New Jersey.”